Scouting for Boys (1908) is Baden-Powell’s rewrite of his earlier military books Reconnaissance and Scouting (1884) and Aids to Scouting for NCOs and Men (1899). These books were military manuals used by the British Army to train scouts. At Mafeking, Baden-Powell recruited and trained boys aged 12–15 as postmen, messengers, and later to carry the wounded, to free men for fighting. Upon return to England, following the Boer War, Baden-Powell learned some British schools had been using his books to teachobservation and deduction. He decided to revise his military publications into a book for boys. Several friends supported Baden-Powell, including Sir William Alexander Smith, founder of the Boys’ Brigade, and Cyril Arthur Pearson, who owned newspapers and printing presses.[2] In 1906 and 1907 Baden-Powell spent a lot of time writing Scouting for Boys and advancing his ideas about the Boy Scouts Scheme. These were tested in a camp on Brownsea Island in the summer of 1907, where Pearson’s literary editor Percy Everett assisted.

Scouting for Boys was published in six fortnightly instalments of approximately 70 pages each, from January to March 1908. They were produced by Pearson’s printer, Horace Cox. These six publications were a success, and as planned were issued in book form on 1 May 1908. Scouting for Boys has been translated into many languages. In 1948, the book was still selling 50,000 copies annually. Only in 1967 was a decline noted by the publisher, and in the last decades of the 20th century, even by the Scout movement, the book came to be seen as a period curiosity.[2] It is claimed to be the fourth bestselling book of the 20th century.[3][4] A realistic estimate is that approximately 4 million copies of the UK edition have been sold. Extrapolating this to 87 different language editions worldwide, historic world sales of Scouting for Boys can be estimated at 100 to 150 million copies since 1908.[5][6]

Scouting for Boys has been published in over thirty consecutive editions by London based C. Arthur Pearson Ltd., and it is translated to all the major languages of the world. Estimatedly, over 100 million books have been printed, making it rank high in the list of best-selling books.[7]